‘Daughters
of feminists won’t put on jeans, or that precious construction
boot Mama found cute. Ugly shoes, they refuse. How come?—Nancy
White, “Daughters of Feminists”

I am not a gender extremist when it comes to parenting. I’m
pretty sure of this.

But then there are times when I’m not so sure. Like when I
find myself staring at an indignant 4-year-old who asks me
why I dressed my daughter in “boy clothes” (which I had just
thought of as casual, won’t-show-the-dirt clothes). Or when
I find myself talking my young nephew into letting my daughter
color a page of his cars coloring book instead of his sister’s
princesses one, even though she’s already forgotten that she
asked for cars.

Or when the fourth mother in a week says, in earshot of my
daughter, that her son is so energetic and independent and
just loves trucks and cars and motorcycles because, of course,
he’s a boy, and it really does seem that boys are different
after all, doesn’t it? and I feel compelled to jump in and
vigorously defend my daughter’s absolute love of all things
vehicular.

It’s true. I don’t think I’d say it if it weren’t. She brightens
up at the arrival of motorcycles so loud they are physically
painful to me, and uses every strategy she can think of to
persuade us that she is, in fact, big enough to drive the
car. From fire trucks to bicycles to the golf carts at the
Altamont Fairgrounds, wheels have, so far, been a nearly lifelong
obsession. This is, no doubt, because we live on a busy street
next to a firehouse.

It may not last. She may lose interest for something “feminine”
just like I lost interest in chess and took up dance. Not
being a big fan of the internal combustion engine, I won’t
actually mind in the slightest.

Still, I don’t think it’s actually silly to want that to be
a choice on her part, not something that she subconsciously
does because some large slice of the world has told her it’s
what she needs to do to be a good girl.

I feel a bit ’70s retro worrying about this stuff. It’s true
that my daughter isn’t going to run into a lot of people who
tell her things like she should pretend to be not smart so
the boys will like her, or that she can be nurse but not a
doctor. It’s more subtle things that are communicated now—assumptions
rather than direct instructions, things about showing emotions,
wanting to get dirty, being reckless or loud or caring or
sensitive, liking trucks or dress up.

It’s less prescriptive. And it even seems to me that the people
who espouse gender determinist views do so a little defensively,
with an implied, “We know we’re not supposed to say this,
but . . .”

Sorry, but I’m going old-school on this one: Yeah, I think
you shouldn’t say it. At least not in the kids’ earshot. Now
that I have a toddler, I’m acutely aware that she and her
cohort are listening and assimilating everything we say, whether
it’s directed at them or not.

I don’t feel the need to defend the proposition that boys
and girls are exactly the same, with chromosomes and hormones
and anatomy making no difference at all. Still, it’s clear
if you’ve met more than a few young kids who been allowed
to make to their own choices that supposedly gender-linked
traits are at most a matter of a continuum with trends, not
an on/off switch. So constantly reinforcing that “boys like
these things and girls like these things,” and “boys don’t
cry,” and “girls are more cautious,” and on and on, are not
just neutral observations about the world. They will in fact
enter toddler brains as literal, universal descriptions of
how the world is and should be and will keep many kids from
developing the interests or habits that would be natural to
them.

Why not leave open the possibilities? Most parents I know
would agree that when kids are young, you tell them they can
have whatever career they want when they grow up—president,
a pro-athlete, an astronaut—even if it’s statistically wildly
unlikely. So I think it’s funny that I end up feeling shrill
and defensive when I try to basically take the same approach
with gender related stuff. After all, if these gender-linked
interests and traits are actually deeply biologically embedded
(as opposed to lightly correlated and mostly socially constructed,
as I’m inclined to believe), then they certainly don’t need
any reinforcement from us to manifest. Why harp on the inevitable?

I realize that I’m fighting a losing battle here. Gender stereotypes,
like all manner of other stereotypes, are all around, and
the bubble it would take to keep them out would be more limiting
than anything their presence can inflict. I’ll keep my girls-can-like-trucks
speech well oiled, and when/if my daughter switches to princesses,
I’ll laugh, break out the dress-up bag, and carefully not
tell all her younger female friends that I know they’ll follow
suit eventually.